Arun Shourie
"We must at present do our best to form a class," Macaulay wrote in his famous Minute of 1835, "who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indians in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect."
Now, many of the strictures in his Minute were entirely to the point: the texts which were in use at that time in Arabic and Sanskrit schools were out-dated, they were teaching notions about geography, astronomy and the rest which had been superseded by recent researches. And in this sense, modernising the syllabus and imparting education through English, opening our eyes to the world was indeed to raise Indians.
But there was another aspect to the Minute: utter scorn for all that had been written or developed here. And more than the knowledge they imbibed of the world, it is this disdain for everything Indian that the products of the new education system internalised.
"...the dialects commonly spoken among the natives of this part of India contain neither literary nor scientific information, and are moreover so poor and rude that until they are enriched from some other quarter it will not be easy to translate any valuable work into them," Macaulay wrote. "I have never found one among them (the proponents of continuing to stress oriental learn- ing)", he wrote, "who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia." "It is, I believe, no exaggeration to say," he wrote, "that all the historical information which has been collected from all the books which have been written in the Sanskrit language is less valuable than what may be found in the most paltry abridgement used at preparatory schools in England...."
With the British gaining supremacy several things happened. The scorn, falsifications and caricatures of our culture by the missionaries had a free field. They were buttressed by the sway the British acquired in the political sphere - even apart from the assistance this gave to missionary propaganda, political tutelage bred inferiority among us, a feeling that our culture was inferior as it had led us to enslavement. Such acquaintance that educated Indians came to have with our tradition was what they learnt from western books and missionaries. How pervasive the effects of the system were and how they have endured to our very day will be evident from a single consideration: although each is among the simplest of the hundreds upon hundreds that can be set out, every single example cited above - descriptions of our land in the Vedas, Puranas and epics, Shankara's journeys, the Granth Sahib, the linkages between temples and pilgrimages -- will be a surprise to most of us, educated Indians today.
The scorn was deepened in part because of the truimph of western science and technology, but even more because of the fact that educated Indians acquired just a smattering of anacquaintance with even this new learning -- they concluded that the 'scientific temper' and 'reason' were all; they knew next to nothing about our culture... The scorn was made repudation by the spread of Marxist ideas: for these ideas every feature of our culture was an expression of, indeed an instrument of a system of exploitation. Crude and vehement examples of this attitude can be had by the ton from the writings of communists and fellow-travellers right upto the 1980s as also from those of editorialists and pontificators right upto today's newspapers. But the effects did not spare the outlook -- and therefore the writings and, when they attained office, the policies -- of the very best.
Pandit Nehru is the most vivid example of the type. He was the truest of nationalists. His sacrifices for our independence compare with those of anyone else. But he had little acquaintance with our tradition -- his description of it, even when they seek to laud it, do not go deeper than the superficial cliche: one has only to read his account of even a relatively straightforward text such as the Gita alongside that of Sri Aurobindo or Gandhiji or Vinoba to see the chasm. There was in fact more than a mere absence of acquaintance. Deep down Panditji felt that whatever worthwhile there might have been in tradition had long since expired, that it had now to be replaced by the "scientific temper" and "reason". It was not just that the Bhakra-Nangals should be "our new temples," but that the old temples were nothing but spreaders of superstition and devices of inequity and exploitation...
Lack of acquaintance with our tradition was one factor. But this new class was -- and remains to our day -- equally ignorant of, and distant from the life of our common people. In addition therefore to not seeing that which was common in our past, it did not, it does not today, as we noted earlier, see the commonalities in the life, in the beliefs and practices of ordinary people across the country.
Giants such as Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo and Gandhiji did all they could to awaken us to the essential elements of our tradition. They saw the essence behind the forms, their eye took in the whole, it did not get stuck at the parts. Others -- from Ramakrishna Paramhamsa to Ramana Maharishi to the Paramacharya at Kanchi -- lived that essence. But after independence offices of State and even more so public discourse came to be filled by the other sort -- the best among them only Macaulay's children.
The result is before us: for seven hundred years to talk of the essence of our tradition was blasphemy; for a hundred years it was stupid; for the last forty years to do so has been "revanchist", "chauvinist", and, the latest, "communal".
Politics
The argument thus far has been as follows: the core of our tradition was the spiritual quest; the core of this spiritual quest was Hindu; the way in which this core manifested itself in the life of our people was the religious. To the western educated Indian the spiritual was just mumbo-jumbo, religion was just opium to entrap the masses, and Hinduism just a particularly pernicious form of that opium. That which was the very essence of our nationhood was thereby denounced. The character our politics too compounded the evil.
When examined closely enough every aggregate disaggregates -- even the atom disaggregates, as do the components into which it disaggregates. A society, a country is an aggregate too: it consists of groups that have both -- features that are common to them and features which differentiate them one from the other...
A Gandhi focusses on that which is common to them, where he sees distances between groups he builds bridges to span them. On the other hand a Jinnah insists that because there are differences, the groups just cannot live together, and he bases his politics on this premise or calculation. A Nehru tries to turn all the groups to values and pursuits -- "our temples, the Bhakra Nangals" -- which vault over those differences. On the other hand, a Ramaswami Naicker, a Lohia, a VP Singh, a Mulayam Singh, a Shahabuddin sees an opportunity in those differences: he focusses on them, he exaggerates them, he enflames in the group he sets out to bamboozle into following him the feeling of having been wronged, of being in peril unless it "preserves its identity" vis-a-vis the engulfing ocean.
In one type of politics the whole is the focus, in the other the parts are -- to the point that the "reality", the very existence of the whole is denied, the very notion that it exists is denounced as a device which has been fabricated to crush the parts one by one. Our politics since Jinnah's time, and even more so since the passing of Panditji has been of the latter kind.
In a word, that which was the essence of our nationhood had come to be denied and denounced already. since then the refrain has been that the parts -- of castes, of religious and liguistic groups, of this class and that -- alone are "real"....
For eighty years, for instance, the Marxists talked in terms of a lofty "internationalism": classes are the only valid category, they said, and these cut across national or state-boundaries. But the moment the War broke out, workers everywhere reacted entirely along reactionary "nationalist" lines -- the German proletariate most of all. "the Only Fatherland" -- the Soviet Union -- too relied wholly on stoking natinalist passions to save itself. Mao's fight against the Japanese, that of the Vietnamase against the Americans, and later against brother-communists, the Chinese -- all these were nationalist strugglers. The name they chose for them were told the tale: they were Wars of National Liberation. The theory was "internationalist", the practice was nationalist. At home here the chasm was even greater: while the resolutions were lofitly "internationalist", in practice the politics of the Marxists was dependent on fanning the sectional demands of "sub-national" groups and caste-groups. Their espousal of the Muslim League's demand for Pakistan was typical: their calculation was that this would endear them to Muslim youth, but they dressed it up in "theses" of Stalin! The Muslims are a separate nation they concluded -- on the basis of an article written by Stalin in 1912! -- and so they must have their separate country. But on Stalin's authority, "A nation is a historically evolved stable community of language, territory, economic life and psychological make-up manifested in a community of culture." The Bengali Muslims and Punjabi Muslims, to take just two groups which were to be yoked to form Pakistan, had not even one of the four factors in common -- neither language, nor territory, nor economic life, nor "psychological make-up". What they had in common -- and that too, as was to be soon evident, only in a notional sense -- was religion. But that the Guru, Stalin, had not included among his criteria. Yet the demand for Pakistan was espoused and everyone opposing it was denounced as reactionary communalist wanting to establish Hindu-hegemony. The same hypocrisy continues to this day -- their "internationalism", for instance, keeps these progressives from taking up the cause of the one people who qualify as a nation by their oracle's definition, the people of Tibet; while their calculations goad them to fan the demands of "sub-national" and caste groups in India. As this hypocrisy continues, so does the vehemence.
The case of the liberals is no different. They denounce Hinduism in public but consult astrologers in private and get paaths and havans done in closets. They glorify the "masses" but denounce the sentiment of the masses for Rama. They denounce our tradition, donning modernism, but hail every politician with a casteist plank. They proclaim, "India is not one nation," and give as proof the Muslim's different perceptions of our past. And simultaneously proclaim, "Muslims are an integral part of India, they are as loyal to India as anyone else," and give as proof the performance of Muslim soldiers in wars against Pakistan. Every effort to remind us of our commonalities, they denounce as a design to swallow up the minorities. And then the absence of a fervour for those common elements they proclaim as the proof of our not being one nation!
Thus, out-doing what they said the last time round, and in many cases, factors of a much more personal kind account for their proclaiming the perverse And hypocrisy and the apprehension that if they allow the discussion to proceed they will be caught out are what account for their vehemence.
From 'A Secular Agenda'
Showing posts with label leninism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label leninism. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Objective Whitewash for Objective History (PART I of II) !
Arun Shourie
"This is an old charge which keeps surfacing now and then," wrote one of those "eminent historians", K. N. Panikkar, in an vituperative response to an article of mine -- the charge that close to two crores had been spent on the "Towards Freedom" project of the Indian Council of Historical Project, and little had been achieved. "About a year back Times of India carried a front page story on this. The historians had then clarified through a public statement published in several newspapers, that they have not drawn any money from the ICHR and that they worked for five years purely in an honorary capacity. When he [that is, me] gets the information from the ministry, if he does, that the editors have not taken any money, I would normally expect Shourie to tender a public apology. But given the intellectual honesty and cultural level reflected in his article, I do not think it would be forthcoming. The alternative of suing for defamation the likes of Shourie is below one's dignity. But I do expect at least the ministry to make a public statement on the factual position."
Strong stuff, and definitive, one would think. It turns out that on 17 July, 1998, in answer to a question tabled in the Rajya Sabha, the Ministry stated that only one part of the project has been completed and published since the original volume of Dr. P. N. Chopra. This is the volume -- in three parts -- by Dr. Partha Sarthi Gupta covering 1943-44. In answer to another question, the Ministry has reported that "After publication of the Volume he was paid an honorarium of Rs. 25,000 in September, 1997."
Dr. Partha Sarthi Gupta, in other words, is the one editor who has completed the work which he had undertaken. For that he has been paid Rs. 25,000. The others have not completed the work they had undertaken, they have therefore not been paid the Rs. 25,000 which are to be paid to them only when their volumes are completed and published. That is how they go about proclaiming themselves to be social workers -- we have been working in an honorary capacity, we have not taken a penny !
And as bits and pieces about the ICHR at last start trickling out, we learn that the "Towards Freedom" project isn't the only one on which large amounts have been spent and which has not been completed. There is an "Economic History of India Project." Rs. 1,955,000 have been spent on it. Nothing has been published as a result. Though, the Ministry told the Rajya Sabha that "according to the information furnished by the ICHR," two volumes of the project -- on Railways and Agriculture -- are "ready for the press".
The Ministry also told the Rajya Sabha that "Professor Bipin Chandra was sanctioned a sum of Rs. 75,000 during 1987-88 for the assignment entitled 'A History of the Indian National Congress'. A sum of Rs. 57,500 has been released to him till 23-6-1989. The remaining balance of Rs. 17,500 is yet to be released because a formal manuscript in this regard is yet to be received." In a word, spare readers this social-worker stance -- "doing all this in a strictly honorary capacity". It is as if Bipin Chandra were to go about saying, "See, I have not even taken the Rs. 17,500 which the ICHR still owes me." And do not miss that effort from the ICHR to help to the extent possible -- "The remaining balance of Rs. 17,500 is yet to be released because a formal manuscript in this regard is yet to be received." Does that mean that some "informal" manuscript has been received, or that no manuscript has been received?
As newspapers and magazines such as Outlook had done, Panikkar had concocted his conspiracy theory on the charge that the BJP Government had changed the word "Rational" into "National", and that it had suppressed three of the five objectives of the ICHR by changing the Memorandum of Association of the ICHR. I had reproduced relevant paragraphs from the Resolutions to show that the same wording had continued for at least twenty years. I had given the numbers and dates of the Resolutions. I had also reported that I had requested the Secretary of the Ministry to help ascertain the year since which the same wording had continued. And what was the response of this "eminent" historian who, as he said, writes signed articles in publications of the Communist Party "because I believe in the ideals it stands for"? "Even if Shourie's contention is true (unlike Shourie who is a BJP MP, a resident of Delhi elected from UP, I have no means to ascertain from the Ministry)..."
That is a much favoured stance: when caught peddling a lie, insinuate that the other fellow is privileged! And that as you are from the working masses, you cannot ascertain whether the facts he has stated are true. Therefore, what you stated must stand as fact -- Q.E.D. !
Exactly the same dodge was used a day or so later by another of these progressives. Manoj Raghuvanshi had invited K. M. Shrimali and me to discuss on Zee Television's Aap ki Adalat the charge that history was being rewritten in communal colours. Raghuvanshi read out what Outlook had reported -- that the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education had issued instructions in 1989 that "Muslim rule should never attract any criticism. Destruction of temples by Muslim rulers and invaders should not be mentioned."
Raghuvanshi asked Shrimali, whether this did not amount to distortion? True, that was a painful period of our history, Raghuvanshi said, but should it be erased from our history books? Would that be objective, rational history? Shrimali's response was the well-practised script : firstly, he did not know that such an instruction was ever issued; if it was issued, he said, he was against it; but one must see what the context was in which the instruction had been issued...
Concerned teachers in West Bengal have been so kind as to send me the circular relating to textbooks for class IX. Dated 28 April, 1989, it is issued by the West Bengal Secondary Board. It is in Bengali, and carries the number "Syl/89/1".
"All the West Bengal Government recognised secondary school Headmasters are being informed," it begins, "that in History textbooks recommended by this Board for Class IX the following amendments to the chapter on the medieval period have been decided after due discussions and review by experts." "
"The authors and publishers of Class IX History textbooks," it continues, "are being requested to incorporate the amendments if books published by them have these aushuddho [impurities, errors] in all subsequent editions, and paste a corrigendum in books which have already been published. A copy of the book with the corrigendum should be deposited with the Syllabus Office (74, Rafi Ahmed Kidwai Road, Calcutta -- 16)." Signed,
"...Chattopadhyaya, Secretary."
The accompanying pages contain two columns : aushuddho -- impurity, or error -- and shuddho. One has just to glance through the changes to see the objective the progressives are trying to achieve through their "objective", "rational" approach to the writing of history. Here are some of the changes.
Book : Bharat Katha, prepared by the Burdwan Education Society, Teachers Enterprise, published by Sukhomoy Das....
*
Page 140 : Aushuddho -- "In Sindhudesh the Arabs did not describe Hindus as Kafir. They had banned cow-slaughter."
Shuddho -- "Delete, 'They had banned cow-slaughter'."
*
Page 141 : Aushuddho -- "Fourthly, using force to destroy Hindu temples was also an expression of aggression. Fifthly, forcibly marrying Hindu women and converting them to Islam before marriage was another way to propagate the fundamentalism of the ulema."
Shuddho : though the column reproduces the sentences only from "Fourthly....", the Board directs that the entire matter from "Secondly.... to ulema" be deleted.
*
Page 141 : Aushuddho -- The logical, philosophical, materialist Mutazilla disappeared. On the one hand, the fundamentalist thinking based on the Quran and the Hadis...."
Shuddho -- "Delete, 'On the one hand, the fundamentalist thinking based on the Quran and the Hadis'...."
Book : Bharatvarsher Itihash, by Dr. Narendranath Bhattacharya, published by Chakravarty and Son...
*
Page 89 : Aushuddho -- "Sultan Mahmud used force for widespread murder, loot, destruction and conversion."
Shuddho -- "There was widespread loot and destruction by Mahmud." That is, no reference to killing, no reference to forcible conversions.
*
Page 89 : Aushuddho -- "He looted valuables worth 2 crore dirham from the Somnath temple and used the Shivling as a step leading up to the masjid in Ghazni."
Shuddho -- "Delete 'and used the Shivling as a step leading up to the masjid in Ghazni.'"
*
Page 112 : Aushuddho -- "Hindu-Muslim relations of the medieval ages is a very sensitive issue. The non- believers had to embrace Islam or death."
Shuddho -- All matter on pages 112-13 to be deleted.
*
Page 113 : Aushuddho -- "According to Islamic law non-Muslims will have to choose between death and Islam. Only the Hanafis allow non-Muslims to pay jaziya in exchange for their lives."
Shuddho -- Rewrite this as follows : "By paying jaziya to Allauddin Khilji, Hindus could lead normal lives." Moreover, all the subsequent sentences "Qazi...", "Taimur's arrival in India..." to be deleted.
*
Page 113 : Aushuddho -- "Mahmud was a believer in the rule of Islam whose core was 'Either Islam or death'.
Shuddho -- Delete.
Book : Bharuter Itihash, by Shobhankar Chattopadhyaya, published by Narmada Publishers.
*
Page 181 : Aushuddho -- "To prevent Hindu women from being seen by Muslims, they were directed to remain indoors."
Shuddho -- Delete.
Book : Itihasher Kahini, by Nalini Bhushan Dasgupta, published by B. B. Kumar.
*
Page 132 : Aushuddho -- According to Todd [the famous chronicler of Rajasthan annals] the purpose behind Allauddin's Chittor expedition was to secure Rana Rattan Singh's beautiful wife, Padmini."
Shuddho -- Delete.
*
Page 154 : Aushuddho -- "As dictated by Islam, there were three options for non-Muslims : get yourself converted to Islam; pay jaziya; accept death. In an Islamic State non-Muslims had to accept one of these three options."
Shuddho -- Delete.
*
Page 161 : Aushuddho -- "The early Sultans were eager to expand the sway of Islam by forcibly converting Hindus into Islam."
Shuddho -- Delete.
Book : Bharuter Itihash, by P. Maiti, Sreedhar Prakashini.
*
Page 117 : Aushuddho -- "There is an account that Allauddin attacked the capital of Mewar, Chittorgarh, to get Padmini, the beautiful wife of Rana Rattan Singh."
Shuddho -- Delete.
*
Page 139 : Ashuddho -- "There was a sense of aristocratic superiority in the purdah system. That is why upper-class Hindus adopted this system from upper-class Muslims. Another opinion has it that purdah came into practice to save Hindu women from Muslims. Most probably, purdah came into vogue because of both factors."
Shuddho -- delete.
The most extensive deletions are ordered in regard to the chapter on "Aurangzeb's policy on religion". Every allusion to what he actually did to the Hindus, to their temples, to the very leitmotif of his rule -- to spread the sway of Islam -- are directed to be excised from the book. He is to be presented as one who had an aversion -- an ordinary sort of aversion, almost a secular one -- to music and dancing, to the presence of prostitutes in the Court, and that it is these things he banished. The only allusion to his having done anything in regard to Islam which is allowed to remain is that "By distancing himself from Akbar's policy of religious tolerance and policy of equal treatment, Aurangzeb caused damage to Mughal rule."
Book : Swadesho Shobhyota, by Dr. P. K. Basu and S. B. Ghatak, Abhinav Prakashan.
*
Page 126 : Ashuddho -- "Some people believe that Allauddin's Mewar expedition was to get hold of Padmini, the wife of Rana Rattan Singh." Shuddho -- Delete.
*
Page 145 : Ashuddho -- "Apart from this, because Islam used extreme inhuman means to establish itself in India, this became an obstacle for the coming together of Indian and Islamic cultures." Shuddho -- Delete.
Book : Bharat Katha, by G. Bhattacharya, Bulbul Prakashan.
*
Page 40 : Ashuddho -- "Muslims used to take recourse to torture and inhuman means to force their religious beliefs and practices on Indians." Shuddho -- Delete.
*
Page 41 : Ashuddho -- "The liberal, humane elements in Islam held out hope for oppressed Hindus." Shuddho -- The entire paragraph beginning with "the caste system among Hindus.... was attacked" is to be deleted. Instead write, "There was no place for casteism in Islam. Understandably, the influence of Islam created an awakening among Hindus against caste discrimination. Lower caste oppressed Hindus embraced Islam."
*
Page 77 : Ashuddho -- "His main task was to oppress non-believers, especially Hindus." Shuddho -- This and the preceding sentence to be deleted.
Book : Bharuter Itihash, by A. C. Roy, published by Prantik.
*
Page 102 : Ashuddho -- "There is an account that Allauddin attacked Chittor to get the beautiful wife of Rana Rattan Singh, Padmini." Shuddho -- Delete.
*
Page 164 : Ashuddho -- "It was his commitment to Islam which made him a fundamentalist." Shuddho -- Delete.
*
Book : Bharut Kahini, by G. C. Rowchoudhury, published by A. K. Sarkar and Co.
*
Page 130 : Ashuddho -- "That is why he adopted the policy of converting Hindus to Islam -- so as to increase the number of Muslims. Those Hindus who refused to discard their religion were indiscriminately massacred by him or his generals." Shuddho -- Delete.
In a word, no forcible conversions, no massacres, no destruction of temples. Just that Hinduism had created an exploitative, casteist society. Islam was egalitarian. Hence the oppressed Hindus embraced Islam !
Muslim historians of those times are in raptures at the heap of Kafirs who have been dispatched to hell. Muslim historians are forever lavishing praise on the ruler for the temples he has destroyed, for the hundreds of thousands he has got to see the light of Islam. Law books like The Hedaya prescribe exactly the options to which these little textbooks alluded. All whitewashed away.
Objective whitewash for objective history. And today if anyone seeks to restore truth to these textbooks, the scream, "Communal rewriting of history."
But there isn't just whitewash of Islam. For after Islam came another great emancipatory ideology -- Marxism- Leninism.
The teachers furnish extracts from the textbook for Class V.
".... in Russia, China, Vietnam, Cuba and in other East European countries, the workers and peasants are ruling the country after capturing power, whereas in U.S.A., England, France and Germany the owners of mills and factories are ruling the country."
".... after the Revolution in Russia the first exploitation-free society was established."
".... Islam and Christianity are the only religions which treated man with honour and equality...."
Thus, not just whitewash, there is hogwash too.
"This is an old charge which keeps surfacing now and then," wrote one of those "eminent historians", K. N. Panikkar, in an vituperative response to an article of mine -- the charge that close to two crores had been spent on the "Towards Freedom" project of the Indian Council of Historical Project, and little had been achieved. "About a year back Times of India carried a front page story on this. The historians had then clarified through a public statement published in several newspapers, that they have not drawn any money from the ICHR and that they worked for five years purely in an honorary capacity. When he [that is, me] gets the information from the ministry, if he does, that the editors have not taken any money, I would normally expect Shourie to tender a public apology. But given the intellectual honesty and cultural level reflected in his article, I do not think it would be forthcoming. The alternative of suing for defamation the likes of Shourie is below one's dignity. But I do expect at least the ministry to make a public statement on the factual position."
Strong stuff, and definitive, one would think. It turns out that on 17 July, 1998, in answer to a question tabled in the Rajya Sabha, the Ministry stated that only one part of the project has been completed and published since the original volume of Dr. P. N. Chopra. This is the volume -- in three parts -- by Dr. Partha Sarthi Gupta covering 1943-44. In answer to another question, the Ministry has reported that "After publication of the Volume he was paid an honorarium of Rs. 25,000 in September, 1997."
Dr. Partha Sarthi Gupta, in other words, is the one editor who has completed the work which he had undertaken. For that he has been paid Rs. 25,000. The others have not completed the work they had undertaken, they have therefore not been paid the Rs. 25,000 which are to be paid to them only when their volumes are completed and published. That is how they go about proclaiming themselves to be social workers -- we have been working in an honorary capacity, we have not taken a penny !
And as bits and pieces about the ICHR at last start trickling out, we learn that the "Towards Freedom" project isn't the only one on which large amounts have been spent and which has not been completed. There is an "Economic History of India Project." Rs. 1,955,000 have been spent on it. Nothing has been published as a result. Though, the Ministry told the Rajya Sabha that "according to the information furnished by the ICHR," two volumes of the project -- on Railways and Agriculture -- are "ready for the press".
The Ministry also told the Rajya Sabha that "Professor Bipin Chandra was sanctioned a sum of Rs. 75,000 during 1987-88 for the assignment entitled 'A History of the Indian National Congress'. A sum of Rs. 57,500 has been released to him till 23-6-1989. The remaining balance of Rs. 17,500 is yet to be released because a formal manuscript in this regard is yet to be received." In a word, spare readers this social-worker stance -- "doing all this in a strictly honorary capacity". It is as if Bipin Chandra were to go about saying, "See, I have not even taken the Rs. 17,500 which the ICHR still owes me." And do not miss that effort from the ICHR to help to the extent possible -- "The remaining balance of Rs. 17,500 is yet to be released because a formal manuscript in this regard is yet to be received." Does that mean that some "informal" manuscript has been received, or that no manuscript has been received?
As newspapers and magazines such as Outlook had done, Panikkar had concocted his conspiracy theory on the charge that the BJP Government had changed the word "Rational" into "National", and that it had suppressed three of the five objectives of the ICHR by changing the Memorandum of Association of the ICHR. I had reproduced relevant paragraphs from the Resolutions to show that the same wording had continued for at least twenty years. I had given the numbers and dates of the Resolutions. I had also reported that I had requested the Secretary of the Ministry to help ascertain the year since which the same wording had continued. And what was the response of this "eminent" historian who, as he said, writes signed articles in publications of the Communist Party "because I believe in the ideals it stands for"? "Even if Shourie's contention is true (unlike Shourie who is a BJP MP, a resident of Delhi elected from UP, I have no means to ascertain from the Ministry)..."
That is a much favoured stance: when caught peddling a lie, insinuate that the other fellow is privileged! And that as you are from the working masses, you cannot ascertain whether the facts he has stated are true. Therefore, what you stated must stand as fact -- Q.E.D. !
Exactly the same dodge was used a day or so later by another of these progressives. Manoj Raghuvanshi had invited K. M. Shrimali and me to discuss on Zee Television's Aap ki Adalat the charge that history was being rewritten in communal colours. Raghuvanshi read out what Outlook had reported -- that the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education had issued instructions in 1989 that "Muslim rule should never attract any criticism. Destruction of temples by Muslim rulers and invaders should not be mentioned."
Raghuvanshi asked Shrimali, whether this did not amount to distortion? True, that was a painful period of our history, Raghuvanshi said, but should it be erased from our history books? Would that be objective, rational history? Shrimali's response was the well-practised script : firstly, he did not know that such an instruction was ever issued; if it was issued, he said, he was against it; but one must see what the context was in which the instruction had been issued...
Concerned teachers in West Bengal have been so kind as to send me the circular relating to textbooks for class IX. Dated 28 April, 1989, it is issued by the West Bengal Secondary Board. It is in Bengali, and carries the number "Syl/89/1".
"All the West Bengal Government recognised secondary school Headmasters are being informed," it begins, "that in History textbooks recommended by this Board for Class IX the following amendments to the chapter on the medieval period have been decided after due discussions and review by experts." "
"The authors and publishers of Class IX History textbooks," it continues, "are being requested to incorporate the amendments if books published by them have these aushuddho [impurities, errors] in all subsequent editions, and paste a corrigendum in books which have already been published. A copy of the book with the corrigendum should be deposited with the Syllabus Office (74, Rafi Ahmed Kidwai Road, Calcutta -- 16)." Signed,
"...Chattopadhyaya, Secretary."
The accompanying pages contain two columns : aushuddho -- impurity, or error -- and shuddho. One has just to glance through the changes to see the objective the progressives are trying to achieve through their "objective", "rational" approach to the writing of history. Here are some of the changes.
Book : Bharat Katha, prepared by the Burdwan Education Society, Teachers Enterprise, published by Sukhomoy Das....
*
Page 140 : Aushuddho -- "In Sindhudesh the Arabs did not describe Hindus as Kafir. They had banned cow-slaughter."
Shuddho -- "Delete, 'They had banned cow-slaughter'."
*
Page 141 : Aushuddho -- "Fourthly, using force to destroy Hindu temples was also an expression of aggression. Fifthly, forcibly marrying Hindu women and converting them to Islam before marriage was another way to propagate the fundamentalism of the ulema."
Shuddho : though the column reproduces the sentences only from "Fourthly....", the Board directs that the entire matter from "Secondly.... to ulema" be deleted.
*
Page 141 : Aushuddho -- The logical, philosophical, materialist Mutazilla disappeared. On the one hand, the fundamentalist thinking based on the Quran and the Hadis...."
Shuddho -- "Delete, 'On the one hand, the fundamentalist thinking based on the Quran and the Hadis'...."
Book : Bharatvarsher Itihash, by Dr. Narendranath Bhattacharya, published by Chakravarty and Son...
*
Page 89 : Aushuddho -- "Sultan Mahmud used force for widespread murder, loot, destruction and conversion."
Shuddho -- "There was widespread loot and destruction by Mahmud." That is, no reference to killing, no reference to forcible conversions.
*
Page 89 : Aushuddho -- "He looted valuables worth 2 crore dirham from the Somnath temple and used the Shivling as a step leading up to the masjid in Ghazni."
Shuddho -- "Delete 'and used the Shivling as a step leading up to the masjid in Ghazni.'"
*
Page 112 : Aushuddho -- "Hindu-Muslim relations of the medieval ages is a very sensitive issue. The non- believers had to embrace Islam or death."
Shuddho -- All matter on pages 112-13 to be deleted.
*
Page 113 : Aushuddho -- "According to Islamic law non-Muslims will have to choose between death and Islam. Only the Hanafis allow non-Muslims to pay jaziya in exchange for their lives."
Shuddho -- Rewrite this as follows : "By paying jaziya to Allauddin Khilji, Hindus could lead normal lives." Moreover, all the subsequent sentences "Qazi...", "Taimur's arrival in India..." to be deleted.
*
Page 113 : Aushuddho -- "Mahmud was a believer in the rule of Islam whose core was 'Either Islam or death'.
Shuddho -- Delete.
Book : Bharuter Itihash, by Shobhankar Chattopadhyaya, published by Narmada Publishers.
*
Page 181 : Aushuddho -- "To prevent Hindu women from being seen by Muslims, they were directed to remain indoors."
Shuddho -- Delete.
Book : Itihasher Kahini, by Nalini Bhushan Dasgupta, published by B. B. Kumar.
*
Page 132 : Aushuddho -- According to Todd [the famous chronicler of Rajasthan annals] the purpose behind Allauddin's Chittor expedition was to secure Rana Rattan Singh's beautiful wife, Padmini."
Shuddho -- Delete.
*
Page 154 : Aushuddho -- "As dictated by Islam, there were three options for non-Muslims : get yourself converted to Islam; pay jaziya; accept death. In an Islamic State non-Muslims had to accept one of these three options."
Shuddho -- Delete.
*
Page 161 : Aushuddho -- "The early Sultans were eager to expand the sway of Islam by forcibly converting Hindus into Islam."
Shuddho -- Delete.
Book : Bharuter Itihash, by P. Maiti, Sreedhar Prakashini.
*
Page 117 : Aushuddho -- "There is an account that Allauddin attacked the capital of Mewar, Chittorgarh, to get Padmini, the beautiful wife of Rana Rattan Singh."
Shuddho -- Delete.
*
Page 139 : Ashuddho -- "There was a sense of aristocratic superiority in the purdah system. That is why upper-class Hindus adopted this system from upper-class Muslims. Another opinion has it that purdah came into practice to save Hindu women from Muslims. Most probably, purdah came into vogue because of both factors."
Shuddho -- delete.
The most extensive deletions are ordered in regard to the chapter on "Aurangzeb's policy on religion". Every allusion to what he actually did to the Hindus, to their temples, to the very leitmotif of his rule -- to spread the sway of Islam -- are directed to be excised from the book. He is to be presented as one who had an aversion -- an ordinary sort of aversion, almost a secular one -- to music and dancing, to the presence of prostitutes in the Court, and that it is these things he banished. The only allusion to his having done anything in regard to Islam which is allowed to remain is that "By distancing himself from Akbar's policy of religious tolerance and policy of equal treatment, Aurangzeb caused damage to Mughal rule."
Book : Swadesho Shobhyota, by Dr. P. K. Basu and S. B. Ghatak, Abhinav Prakashan.
*
Page 126 : Ashuddho -- "Some people believe that Allauddin's Mewar expedition was to get hold of Padmini, the wife of Rana Rattan Singh." Shuddho -- Delete.
*
Page 145 : Ashuddho -- "Apart from this, because Islam used extreme inhuman means to establish itself in India, this became an obstacle for the coming together of Indian and Islamic cultures." Shuddho -- Delete.
Book : Bharat Katha, by G. Bhattacharya, Bulbul Prakashan.
*
Page 40 : Ashuddho -- "Muslims used to take recourse to torture and inhuman means to force their religious beliefs and practices on Indians." Shuddho -- Delete.
*
Page 41 : Ashuddho -- "The liberal, humane elements in Islam held out hope for oppressed Hindus." Shuddho -- The entire paragraph beginning with "the caste system among Hindus.... was attacked" is to be deleted. Instead write, "There was no place for casteism in Islam. Understandably, the influence of Islam created an awakening among Hindus against caste discrimination. Lower caste oppressed Hindus embraced Islam."
*
Page 77 : Ashuddho -- "His main task was to oppress non-believers, especially Hindus." Shuddho -- This and the preceding sentence to be deleted.
Book : Bharuter Itihash, by A. C. Roy, published by Prantik.
*
Page 102 : Ashuddho -- "There is an account that Allauddin attacked Chittor to get the beautiful wife of Rana Rattan Singh, Padmini." Shuddho -- Delete.
*
Page 164 : Ashuddho -- "It was his commitment to Islam which made him a fundamentalist." Shuddho -- Delete.
*
Book : Bharut Kahini, by G. C. Rowchoudhury, published by A. K. Sarkar and Co.
*
Page 130 : Ashuddho -- "That is why he adopted the policy of converting Hindus to Islam -- so as to increase the number of Muslims. Those Hindus who refused to discard their religion were indiscriminately massacred by him or his generals." Shuddho -- Delete.
In a word, no forcible conversions, no massacres, no destruction of temples. Just that Hinduism had created an exploitative, casteist society. Islam was egalitarian. Hence the oppressed Hindus embraced Islam !
Muslim historians of those times are in raptures at the heap of Kafirs who have been dispatched to hell. Muslim historians are forever lavishing praise on the ruler for the temples he has destroyed, for the hundreds of thousands he has got to see the light of Islam. Law books like The Hedaya prescribe exactly the options to which these little textbooks alluded. All whitewashed away.
Objective whitewash for objective history. And today if anyone seeks to restore truth to these textbooks, the scream, "Communal rewriting of history."
But there isn't just whitewash of Islam. For after Islam came another great emancipatory ideology -- Marxism- Leninism.
The teachers furnish extracts from the textbook for Class V.
".... in Russia, China, Vietnam, Cuba and in other East European countries, the workers and peasants are ruling the country after capturing power, whereas in U.S.A., England, France and Germany the owners of mills and factories are ruling the country."
".... after the Revolution in Russia the first exploitation-free society was established."
".... Islam and Christianity are the only religions which treated man with honour and equality...."
Thus, not just whitewash, there is hogwash too.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
What Propels Them? What Blinds Them?
Arun Shourie
"India has massacred 60,000 Kashmiris, but the people of Kashmir will never rest till they have won freedom;" "India has deployed 700,000 soldiers in the Valley, and yet the Kashmiri mujahideen are inflicting heavy losses on them every day;" "How laughable it is that India has packed the Kargil sector with 40,000 troops, and just a handful of mujahidin are able to inflict humiliation upon humiliation on them;" Indian infrastructure has collapsed to such an extent that even those Indian casualties which were "lucky enough to be evacuated by air, had to wait for three days for a bed in Srinagar hospitals" -- such "facts" are repeated ad nauseum in Pakistani papers. Sixty thousand Kashmiris killed by India? Seven hundred thousand troops in Kashmir? Forty thousand troops in Kargil? Soldiers waiting for three days to get a hospital bed? We tend to dismiss such assertions as the usual lies -- friends who run one of our most conscientious news services about happenings in our neighbourhood, Public Opinion Trends, are so inured to these concoctions that they excise them from their reports! In fact, the concoctions deserve attention.
For one thing they are part of a world-view, they are part of an Ideology. Everything Pakistan does about Kashmir -- stoking terrorism, sending army regulars, spreading fabrications at every international gathering -- it pictures to itself as jihad, as a religious undertaking, indeed as an Allah-ordained duty. Concocting lies then becomes a device for discharging that duty. "War is stratagem," the Prophet has said, "War is deceit." [Sahih Muslim, Volume III, pp. 945, 990-91; Sahih al-Bukhari, Volume IV, pp. 166-67; Sunan Abu Dawud, Volume II, p. 728] Thus one may lie, one may kill the enemy while he is asleep, one may kill him by tricking him. [For instance, Sahih al-Bukhari, Volume IV, pp. 164-65, 167-68.] That is one problem: for the man or force weaned on jihad, the concoctions are an intrinsic part of the struggle he is waging, for him the fact that the war he is waging is Allah-ordained is a complete justification for cruelty, for lies and the rest; on our side, we don't just shut our eyes to the concoctions that result from it, we shut our eyes even more tightly to the Ideology of which they are but the result.
There is an immediate, practical result also. These sorts of "facts" and assertions are repeated so often that by now they have sunk into the subconscious of the average Pakistani. He actually believes that India has massacred sixty thousand Kashmiris, he actually believes that Kashmir is aflame, that Kashmiris are dying to merge into Pakistan, that it is just a matter of months and they will be able to do so. From this it is but a step to conclude that all that is necessary is to give one more push, to launch one more offensive, and the Kashmiris will rise, the place will go up in flames, India will be broken, the job will be done.
The believer, having internalised the concoction, just can't see why the world doesn't believe what he is putting out. As we have seen, Pakistani papers had themselves been reporting -- with evident self-congratulation -- that soldiers of the Pakistan Army have wrested posts from the Indian Army, that they have occupied a village in... As international opinion turned against Pakistan for that very reason, suddenly, as if a switch had been turned, references to the Pakistan Army ceased, and the victories were ascribed to the valiant mujahidin. Within days, references to these mythical mujahidin too were replaced -- now it was the "Kashmiri freedom fighters" who were inflicting the "humiliating defeats" on the Indian Army. One feature of course is that these switches come naturally -- as the war is a jihad in the cause of Allah, whichever thesis will serve The Great Cause is the one which must be pushed. The other is that the believer is just not able to see why the world does not swallow his fabrication.
As everything is a matter of belief in Allah, to question the "fact" which has been put out, to doubt a scenario -- the sheikhchili's scenario in which one favourable twist leads to another devastating turn -- becomes blasphemy, it becomes proof that one lacks faith, it is betrayal. Thus, not to believe that Indians have massacred sixty thousand Kashmiris, to doubt that Kashmir is on the brink of breaking away from India, not to believe that Kashmiris are pining to join Pakistan is to be unpatriotic, it is to lack faith in the fundamental notion that, as they all believe in Islam, all Muslims constitute one, seamless ummah. As a consequence, while not even the allies and props of Pakistan are buying its assertions today, self-delusion remains a duty!
The insurgency which Pakistan had orchestrated in Kashmir is dead: to cite a single index, while the number of tourists in the Valley had fallen to just 600 in 1996, this year they are running close to 250,000. Recruitment of locals has evaporated. But in the Pakistani press the insurgency is at the point of overturning the Indian State! A fundamental change has taken place in the area, writes a commentator in The News of 3 June. " ...Freedom fighters in Kashmir have attained self-sufficiency in weapons and have developed indigenous techniques of fighting which have become a way of life for them," he writes. "They fight under the cover of darkness, under the protection of mountains and in their own area which they know very well. They move in the area like wild goats and can reach anywhere without any difficulty. They return to their homes and hearths in the morning after accomplishing their task and join their family on the jobs which are needed to be done to earn livelihood." "Two weeks of fighting in the Kargil sector have established the following facts," the analyst continues. "That the indigenous insurrection movement in Kashmir is so strong and so well-armed that India can no longer hold it in check. It is also no longer possible for India to cross the international boundary and so the fighting will remain confined to Kashmir where India has always been the loser..."
"On the diplomatic front the Indians are playing on the back-foot," writes an analyst in The News of 4 June. "....The Kargil operation [of India], aimed at killing the Kashmir issue, will have helped to chisel away at the paralysed and hardened Kashmir position of the international players [an acknowledgment there!]. And the Kashmiris living under Indian control know that. Much like the Intifada which proved to be a potent stimulus for the Palestinians under Israeli occupation, India's Kargil fiasco will renew the Kashmiri resolve to fight on. Psychologically, the fact that a mere 400 - 600 mujahidin have bogged down the world's third largest army for a few months, irrespective of the final outcome [another acknowledgment there!], will be a major morale booster for the Kashmiris of Kashmir." The diplomatic isolation of Pakistan is for all to see, but the analyst remarks, "Nawaz Sharief meanwhile, ably supported on foreign policy issues by his Information Minister and Foreign Office, has pursued a near-faultless India policy. He has mixed peace offers with commitment to his country's defence and projected nuclear strength with gentleness. He is indeed South Asia's strong man of peace...." Remember, The News is the paper which was till recently the special target of the attentions of Nawaz Sharief and his Information Minister!
Belief makes one not just blind, it makes one reckless. The Taliban in the madrasas are of course fed Quranic stories of the "wars" of Badr etc. But they are not the only ones. The regular soldier and officer of the Pakistani Army has them drilled into him just as deep. And the lesson from these stories which is stuffed into him is not some particular stratagem to be followed in a siege or an assault, say; the lesson he internalises is that Allah shall always come to the aid of believers, that the side of Allah shall prevail. So all one has to do is leap.
One of the things that strikes one in reading books from Pakistan, the analyses in their newspapers, judgments of their courts is the singular absence of subtlety, of shades. The analyses are gross: the categories are basic, the conclusions predictable. This is not the result merely of mental habits or capacities. Ideology makes grossness inevitable. Everything is either black or white, everyone is either a co-religionist or one who will some day deceive one, every engagement is going to turn out one way -- capitalism is certain to collapse, it is on the verge of collapsing, Allah is bound to come to the assistance of believers, His cause is bound to prevail...
There is another consequence -- Pakistani newspapers are replete with instances of it. The belief having been drilled into him that he is doing Allah's Will -- or, as in Marxism-Leninism, of History -- the believer just cannot believe that the fault may lie with him. As the war he is waging has been ordained by Allah, the one who is opposing him must, by definition, be doing so for some perverse reason, for some ulterior purpose. Pakistanis have been genuinely surprised at Washington's statements disapproving their crossing the Line of Control. They just cannot see that Pakistan might be in the wrong. Their analysts hint that the USA is tilting towards India because it is drooling at the prospect of India's large market! Commenting on a statement of the American Secretary of State, The Nation of June 6 remarks ruefully, "India being the bigger market for trade does not mean that the world should give up its moral values on political issues"! By the 8th, the paper is hinting at some even deeper mystery! Repeating the new fabrications on the Line of Control, the paper remarks in an editorial, "If despite India's strange illogicality, the US State Department chooses to buy the Indian accusations and discounts the Pakistani version of the incident, there has to be more to it than a fair assessment of the situation"!
The Indians cannot be fighting Pakistani troops because they have occupied Indian territory. They are doing so for some other, unworthy, deplorable reasons. Vajpayee is facing an election, and launching a war against Pakistan has been his party's traditional way of gathering votes! "The BJP government has collapsed despite its 'popular' nuclear policy," observes Najam Sethi's The Friday Times of 4-10 June in its editorial, "but it still clings to the old political tricks to garner votes. It is also hostage to an aggressive policy in Kashmir. If it lets up, the Congress will pillory it by adopting a more hawkish stance. India's politicians have therefore hog-tied themselves by their devotion to this vote-getting gimmick..." "They [the Indian politicians] have made de-escalation more difficult all round," it continues -- Pakistani troops cross the Line of Control, our forces, by fighting back, make de-escalation difficult! "The Congress government committed the 'popular' folly of sending troops to Siachin. But no later government has dared to withdraw troops from it..." So long as Pakistani troops were occupying Siachin it was far-sightedness, it became folly when Indians occupied it! And daring would consist in vacating Siachin for the Pakistani Army, not in holding it!
In this analysis the BJP government is strong enough to push its "old tricks to garner votes". In other analyses, the reason is the opposite! Writing in The Nation of 28 May, an analyst tells his readers that an Interim, weak government is in office in Delhi, and that "hawks in the Indian military establishment are ruling the roost," and that this is what accounts for the scale of the response, the air-strikes and the rest!
But such objective factors -- "old political tricks to garner votes" and the like -- are never enough for a believer. He must detect something deep, some fundamental perversity in the one who is being so obdurate as not to fall at the believer's feet. Predictably, therefore, that staple of Pakistani papers has returned: "Hindu cunning"! And this time, just as predictably, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee is the epitome of it. "Mr Vajpayee has proved more two-faced than his predecessor," notes The Friday Times. "Vajpayee -- the man who showed statesmanship by describing his visit to Minar Pakistan as 'the defining moment in history' -- has only appeared at the bar of history as a clumsy pygmy," The News of 30 May tells its readers. "A short-sighted and pathetically parochial politician whose instincts for political survival are both reactionary and jingoistic. His passion for the cheap thrill coupled with the BJP's desire to regain a foothold in contemporary Indian politics have resulted in airstrikes on Kashmiri freedom fighters..."
It isn't just information from which Ideology insulates one. Ideology insulates one from experience just as much. When the believer succeeds, he is confirmed in the belief that the Ideology has driven into him -- that Allah is with him. But the Ideology has also driven another notion into him -- a notion that protects the Ideology from an adverse outcome, but by the same token disables the believer from learning. When they are defeated, the faithful have been taught to conclude, Allah is just testing their faith: Allah has put defeat in their path, they have been taught, to ascertain whether at such a time they lose faith in Allah's promise. Do they abandon their faith in Allah?, Allah wants to see. Do they blame Him rather than themselves?, Allah wants to make sure.
This Ideology-induced deafness is compounded in the case of Pakistan by the essentially authoritarian nature of both -- its society as well as polity. In free, democratic societies there is incessant self-examination. In authoritarian societies pasting blame on The Other becomes nature. The defeat in Vietnam caused an enormous amount of introspection in America: it led, among other things, to new strategic thinking, to new technologies. The rout in Bangladesh caused none in Pakistan. We see the same sequence today. Indian forces are rolling back the Pakistanis in Kargil. Internationally Pakistan stands isolated as never before. But Pakistani press is singing hosannas: the success of the mujahideen in holding the Indian Army at bay has inspired the freedom fighters of Kashmir, they sing to themselves, the uprising against India will now reach new heights; the Kashmir issue has been "irretrievably internationalized," they exult; the world now realizes that Kashmir can be the nuclear flash-point, they declare to their own satisfaction.
These features hold for Pakistanis in general, immersed as they are in, committed as they are to an Ideology, Islam. Each of them is compounded ten-fold in the case of the officer and soldier of the Pakistan Army. Stephen Cohen has noted how the "Sandhurst" and "American" generations of their officers have passed, how the officer-class consists increasingly of persons from the lower middle class and peasant stock. In the country at large these classes are among the ones which have been swept up most by Islamic rhetoric: and, what with the continuing collapse of educational institutions, at an accelerating pace. The success which the Army has achieved through the Taliban in Afghanistan also buttresses the notion that "the time of Islam has returned".
There are other factors too. The more intense Islamic rhetoric has become, the more cut-off from outside influences and opinions Pakistan has become, the Army even more so than other sections: almost the only thing which has kept an aperture open to the rest of the world is Pakistan's technological backwardness -- because of this backwardness, it has had to continue relying on other countries for technical upgradation, and hence some contrary ideas must still be sneaking in. But it is a tiny aperture: the countries from whom it secures the weapons are also ones whose life and ways its Ideology teaches it to hate and reject.
Not only is the Army, like other sections of Pakistani society, insulated from the world, it is insulated from those other sections within Pakistan too. The Army is overwhelmingly Punjabi. Within that one province, its recruits are overwhelmingly from a small clutch of five or six districts.
Furthermore, that the Army has such an over-weaning, predominant status in Pakistani society and governance impels a certain deafness: few dare question what it says and does, all the greater reason for the Army to conclude that what it is thinking is valid. And there is another twist. The Pakistani Army has great power, overwhelming power vis a vis other sections of society, but not esteem. That went -- first with the way it lost Pakistan in 1971, and then with the mess that the Army made of the country during the years it had absolute sway, the Zia years. Since then, while the success in Afghanistan has restored its esteem somewhat, this is counter-balanced with the reputation for corruption, the reputation for being involved in the drug-trade etc. which have got stuck to it.
To the faith of the believer, therefore, has been added a compulsion -- to prove itself again.
Each of these factors applies to organizations like the ISI twenty-fold. And to the terrorist organizations the ISI etc. have spawned -- a hundred-fold.
In a word, Kargil is but the latest of what Pakistan will continue to inflict on us. Defeating each such venture with demonstrative harshness is as much a part of the peace-process as pursuing every opening like Lahore.
The Afternoon Despatch & Courier
June 25, 1999
"India has massacred 60,000 Kashmiris, but the people of Kashmir will never rest till they have won freedom;" "India has deployed 700,000 soldiers in the Valley, and yet the Kashmiri mujahideen are inflicting heavy losses on them every day;" "How laughable it is that India has packed the Kargil sector with 40,000 troops, and just a handful of mujahidin are able to inflict humiliation upon humiliation on them;" Indian infrastructure has collapsed to such an extent that even those Indian casualties which were "lucky enough to be evacuated by air, had to wait for three days for a bed in Srinagar hospitals" -- such "facts" are repeated ad nauseum in Pakistani papers. Sixty thousand Kashmiris killed by India? Seven hundred thousand troops in Kashmir? Forty thousand troops in Kargil? Soldiers waiting for three days to get a hospital bed? We tend to dismiss such assertions as the usual lies -- friends who run one of our most conscientious news services about happenings in our neighbourhood, Public Opinion Trends, are so inured to these concoctions that they excise them from their reports! In fact, the concoctions deserve attention.
For one thing they are part of a world-view, they are part of an Ideology. Everything Pakistan does about Kashmir -- stoking terrorism, sending army regulars, spreading fabrications at every international gathering -- it pictures to itself as jihad, as a religious undertaking, indeed as an Allah-ordained duty. Concocting lies then becomes a device for discharging that duty. "War is stratagem," the Prophet has said, "War is deceit." [Sahih Muslim, Volume III, pp. 945, 990-91; Sahih al-Bukhari, Volume IV, pp. 166-67; Sunan Abu Dawud, Volume II, p. 728] Thus one may lie, one may kill the enemy while he is asleep, one may kill him by tricking him. [For instance, Sahih al-Bukhari, Volume IV, pp. 164-65, 167-68.] That is one problem: for the man or force weaned on jihad, the concoctions are an intrinsic part of the struggle he is waging, for him the fact that the war he is waging is Allah-ordained is a complete justification for cruelty, for lies and the rest; on our side, we don't just shut our eyes to the concoctions that result from it, we shut our eyes even more tightly to the Ideology of which they are but the result.
There is an immediate, practical result also. These sorts of "facts" and assertions are repeated so often that by now they have sunk into the subconscious of the average Pakistani. He actually believes that India has massacred sixty thousand Kashmiris, he actually believes that Kashmir is aflame, that Kashmiris are dying to merge into Pakistan, that it is just a matter of months and they will be able to do so. From this it is but a step to conclude that all that is necessary is to give one more push, to launch one more offensive, and the Kashmiris will rise, the place will go up in flames, India will be broken, the job will be done.
The believer, having internalised the concoction, just can't see why the world doesn't believe what he is putting out. As we have seen, Pakistani papers had themselves been reporting -- with evident self-congratulation -- that soldiers of the Pakistan Army have wrested posts from the Indian Army, that they have occupied a village in... As international opinion turned against Pakistan for that very reason, suddenly, as if a switch had been turned, references to the Pakistan Army ceased, and the victories were ascribed to the valiant mujahidin. Within days, references to these mythical mujahidin too were replaced -- now it was the "Kashmiri freedom fighters" who were inflicting the "humiliating defeats" on the Indian Army. One feature of course is that these switches come naturally -- as the war is a jihad in the cause of Allah, whichever thesis will serve The Great Cause is the one which must be pushed. The other is that the believer is just not able to see why the world does not swallow his fabrication.
As everything is a matter of belief in Allah, to question the "fact" which has been put out, to doubt a scenario -- the sheikhchili's scenario in which one favourable twist leads to another devastating turn -- becomes blasphemy, it becomes proof that one lacks faith, it is betrayal. Thus, not to believe that Indians have massacred sixty thousand Kashmiris, to doubt that Kashmir is on the brink of breaking away from India, not to believe that Kashmiris are pining to join Pakistan is to be unpatriotic, it is to lack faith in the fundamental notion that, as they all believe in Islam, all Muslims constitute one, seamless ummah. As a consequence, while not even the allies and props of Pakistan are buying its assertions today, self-delusion remains a duty!
The insurgency which Pakistan had orchestrated in Kashmir is dead: to cite a single index, while the number of tourists in the Valley had fallen to just 600 in 1996, this year they are running close to 250,000. Recruitment of locals has evaporated. But in the Pakistani press the insurgency is at the point of overturning the Indian State! A fundamental change has taken place in the area, writes a commentator in The News of 3 June. " ...Freedom fighters in Kashmir have attained self-sufficiency in weapons and have developed indigenous techniques of fighting which have become a way of life for them," he writes. "They fight under the cover of darkness, under the protection of mountains and in their own area which they know very well. They move in the area like wild goats and can reach anywhere without any difficulty. They return to their homes and hearths in the morning after accomplishing their task and join their family on the jobs which are needed to be done to earn livelihood." "Two weeks of fighting in the Kargil sector have established the following facts," the analyst continues. "That the indigenous insurrection movement in Kashmir is so strong and so well-armed that India can no longer hold it in check. It is also no longer possible for India to cross the international boundary and so the fighting will remain confined to Kashmir where India has always been the loser..."
"On the diplomatic front the Indians are playing on the back-foot," writes an analyst in The News of 4 June. "....The Kargil operation [of India], aimed at killing the Kashmir issue, will have helped to chisel away at the paralysed and hardened Kashmir position of the international players [an acknowledgment there!]. And the Kashmiris living under Indian control know that. Much like the Intifada which proved to be a potent stimulus for the Palestinians under Israeli occupation, India's Kargil fiasco will renew the Kashmiri resolve to fight on. Psychologically, the fact that a mere 400 - 600 mujahidin have bogged down the world's third largest army for a few months, irrespective of the final outcome [another acknowledgment there!], will be a major morale booster for the Kashmiris of Kashmir." The diplomatic isolation of Pakistan is for all to see, but the analyst remarks, "Nawaz Sharief meanwhile, ably supported on foreign policy issues by his Information Minister and Foreign Office, has pursued a near-faultless India policy. He has mixed peace offers with commitment to his country's defence and projected nuclear strength with gentleness. He is indeed South Asia's strong man of peace...." Remember, The News is the paper which was till recently the special target of the attentions of Nawaz Sharief and his Information Minister!
Belief makes one not just blind, it makes one reckless. The Taliban in the madrasas are of course fed Quranic stories of the "wars" of Badr etc. But they are not the only ones. The regular soldier and officer of the Pakistani Army has them drilled into him just as deep. And the lesson from these stories which is stuffed into him is not some particular stratagem to be followed in a siege or an assault, say; the lesson he internalises is that Allah shall always come to the aid of believers, that the side of Allah shall prevail. So all one has to do is leap.
One of the things that strikes one in reading books from Pakistan, the analyses in their newspapers, judgments of their courts is the singular absence of subtlety, of shades. The analyses are gross: the categories are basic, the conclusions predictable. This is not the result merely of mental habits or capacities. Ideology makes grossness inevitable. Everything is either black or white, everyone is either a co-religionist or one who will some day deceive one, every engagement is going to turn out one way -- capitalism is certain to collapse, it is on the verge of collapsing, Allah is bound to come to the assistance of believers, His cause is bound to prevail...
There is another consequence -- Pakistani newspapers are replete with instances of it. The belief having been drilled into him that he is doing Allah's Will -- or, as in Marxism-Leninism, of History -- the believer just cannot believe that the fault may lie with him. As the war he is waging has been ordained by Allah, the one who is opposing him must, by definition, be doing so for some perverse reason, for some ulterior purpose. Pakistanis have been genuinely surprised at Washington's statements disapproving their crossing the Line of Control. They just cannot see that Pakistan might be in the wrong. Their analysts hint that the USA is tilting towards India because it is drooling at the prospect of India's large market! Commenting on a statement of the American Secretary of State, The Nation of June 6 remarks ruefully, "India being the bigger market for trade does not mean that the world should give up its moral values on political issues"! By the 8th, the paper is hinting at some even deeper mystery! Repeating the new fabrications on the Line of Control, the paper remarks in an editorial, "If despite India's strange illogicality, the US State Department chooses to buy the Indian accusations and discounts the Pakistani version of the incident, there has to be more to it than a fair assessment of the situation"!
The Indians cannot be fighting Pakistani troops because they have occupied Indian territory. They are doing so for some other, unworthy, deplorable reasons. Vajpayee is facing an election, and launching a war against Pakistan has been his party's traditional way of gathering votes! "The BJP government has collapsed despite its 'popular' nuclear policy," observes Najam Sethi's The Friday Times of 4-10 June in its editorial, "but it still clings to the old political tricks to garner votes. It is also hostage to an aggressive policy in Kashmir. If it lets up, the Congress will pillory it by adopting a more hawkish stance. India's politicians have therefore hog-tied themselves by their devotion to this vote-getting gimmick..." "They [the Indian politicians] have made de-escalation more difficult all round," it continues -- Pakistani troops cross the Line of Control, our forces, by fighting back, make de-escalation difficult! "The Congress government committed the 'popular' folly of sending troops to Siachin. But no later government has dared to withdraw troops from it..." So long as Pakistani troops were occupying Siachin it was far-sightedness, it became folly when Indians occupied it! And daring would consist in vacating Siachin for the Pakistani Army, not in holding it!
In this analysis the BJP government is strong enough to push its "old tricks to garner votes". In other analyses, the reason is the opposite! Writing in The Nation of 28 May, an analyst tells his readers that an Interim, weak government is in office in Delhi, and that "hawks in the Indian military establishment are ruling the roost," and that this is what accounts for the scale of the response, the air-strikes and the rest!
But such objective factors -- "old political tricks to garner votes" and the like -- are never enough for a believer. He must detect something deep, some fundamental perversity in the one who is being so obdurate as not to fall at the believer's feet. Predictably, therefore, that staple of Pakistani papers has returned: "Hindu cunning"! And this time, just as predictably, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee is the epitome of it. "Mr Vajpayee has proved more two-faced than his predecessor," notes The Friday Times. "Vajpayee -- the man who showed statesmanship by describing his visit to Minar Pakistan as 'the defining moment in history' -- has only appeared at the bar of history as a clumsy pygmy," The News of 30 May tells its readers. "A short-sighted and pathetically parochial politician whose instincts for political survival are both reactionary and jingoistic. His passion for the cheap thrill coupled with the BJP's desire to regain a foothold in contemporary Indian politics have resulted in airstrikes on Kashmiri freedom fighters..."
It isn't just information from which Ideology insulates one. Ideology insulates one from experience just as much. When the believer succeeds, he is confirmed in the belief that the Ideology has driven into him -- that Allah is with him. But the Ideology has also driven another notion into him -- a notion that protects the Ideology from an adverse outcome, but by the same token disables the believer from learning. When they are defeated, the faithful have been taught to conclude, Allah is just testing their faith: Allah has put defeat in their path, they have been taught, to ascertain whether at such a time they lose faith in Allah's promise. Do they abandon their faith in Allah?, Allah wants to see. Do they blame Him rather than themselves?, Allah wants to make sure.
This Ideology-induced deafness is compounded in the case of Pakistan by the essentially authoritarian nature of both -- its society as well as polity. In free, democratic societies there is incessant self-examination. In authoritarian societies pasting blame on The Other becomes nature. The defeat in Vietnam caused an enormous amount of introspection in America: it led, among other things, to new strategic thinking, to new technologies. The rout in Bangladesh caused none in Pakistan. We see the same sequence today. Indian forces are rolling back the Pakistanis in Kargil. Internationally Pakistan stands isolated as never before. But Pakistani press is singing hosannas: the success of the mujahideen in holding the Indian Army at bay has inspired the freedom fighters of Kashmir, they sing to themselves, the uprising against India will now reach new heights; the Kashmir issue has been "irretrievably internationalized," they exult; the world now realizes that Kashmir can be the nuclear flash-point, they declare to their own satisfaction.
These features hold for Pakistanis in general, immersed as they are in, committed as they are to an Ideology, Islam. Each of them is compounded ten-fold in the case of the officer and soldier of the Pakistan Army. Stephen Cohen has noted how the "Sandhurst" and "American" generations of their officers have passed, how the officer-class consists increasingly of persons from the lower middle class and peasant stock. In the country at large these classes are among the ones which have been swept up most by Islamic rhetoric: and, what with the continuing collapse of educational institutions, at an accelerating pace. The success which the Army has achieved through the Taliban in Afghanistan also buttresses the notion that "the time of Islam has returned".
There are other factors too. The more intense Islamic rhetoric has become, the more cut-off from outside influences and opinions Pakistan has become, the Army even more so than other sections: almost the only thing which has kept an aperture open to the rest of the world is Pakistan's technological backwardness -- because of this backwardness, it has had to continue relying on other countries for technical upgradation, and hence some contrary ideas must still be sneaking in. But it is a tiny aperture: the countries from whom it secures the weapons are also ones whose life and ways its Ideology teaches it to hate and reject.
Not only is the Army, like other sections of Pakistani society, insulated from the world, it is insulated from those other sections within Pakistan too. The Army is overwhelmingly Punjabi. Within that one province, its recruits are overwhelmingly from a small clutch of five or six districts.
Furthermore, that the Army has such an over-weaning, predominant status in Pakistani society and governance impels a certain deafness: few dare question what it says and does, all the greater reason for the Army to conclude that what it is thinking is valid. And there is another twist. The Pakistani Army has great power, overwhelming power vis a vis other sections of society, but not esteem. That went -- first with the way it lost Pakistan in 1971, and then with the mess that the Army made of the country during the years it had absolute sway, the Zia years. Since then, while the success in Afghanistan has restored its esteem somewhat, this is counter-balanced with the reputation for corruption, the reputation for being involved in the drug-trade etc. which have got stuck to it.
To the faith of the believer, therefore, has been added a compulsion -- to prove itself again.
Each of these factors applies to organizations like the ISI twenty-fold. And to the terrorist organizations the ISI etc. have spawned -- a hundred-fold.
In a word, Kargil is but the latest of what Pakistan will continue to inflict on us. Defeating each such venture with demonstrative harshness is as much a part of the peace-process as pursuing every opening like Lahore.
The Afternoon Despatch & Courier
June 25, 1999
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